


Worthy of Love Anyways

by paradoxicy



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Past Lives, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Study, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, existential problems, hyungwon is a polygot, hyungwon is tired and wonho is a good friend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 13:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxicy/pseuds/paradoxicy
Summary: Hyungwon travels the whole world to hide from love.The soulmate!au where no matter what life, you and your soulmate will always find each other. Some people remember their other lives (past lives), some don’t.





	Worthy of Love Anyways

**Author's Note:**

> Song title taken from Atlas: Three by Sleeping At Last. Sleeping At Last has provided me good angst music for the last three years I have been writing (and not writing). Also, this is my first Monsta X fic and my first fic in legit a whole year so my writing? Wack. But my love for hyungkyun? It's bursting. 
> 
> A character study of sorts. A fic with the purpose of fulfilling my love for this pairing and trying to get back into the habit of writing. I took some creative liberties with the whole soulmate thing so if it doesn't make sense, this fic can be a learning lesson for the both of us!!!!
> 
> English isn’t my first language either so any mistake made is bound to happen!! Also edited only by me, and I’ve reread this thing like 50 times so if there is something I didn’t catch, tell me! So many exclamation marks!!
> 
> The first chapter is very introductory so don't....expect anything. The juicy stuff comes later :~)

**“A bond between souls is ancient – older than the planet.” – _Dianna Hardy_**

 

 

 **Location** : Berlin Brandenburg Airport  
**Time** : Sometime in the morning.

 

Hyungwon thinks he’s cursed. Had to be, as there was no other explanation for him waiting at the airport terminal, in Berlin en route to Tokyo with a five hour delay.

Sure, going in the middle of winter wasn’t his brightest idea, but he needed to be somewhere. Just not _there_. Hoseok would've definitely called him a coward for running off to God-knows-where after a slight inconvenience, but Hyungwon's just doing what he does best (translation: ignoring his responsibilities), and so far it hasn't failed him yet.

The young lady next to him clicks away on her laptop sprawled over her lap with her newly manicured nails as she speaks in a rush of a language he recognizes as French into her phone. Her voice is raspy, sharp, and a lot deeper than how she looks. She has her phone pressed in between her pale cheek and shoulder, an uncomfortable position in which she had kept up for the last 30 minutes he has been sitting there. The darkness of her straight hair cascades down her face, reminding him of something so achingly familiar, he has to divert his gaze somewhere else.  

There are twenty or so passengers waiting for the same plane. Time ticks by slowly and the wifi is just as slow as it was back in his hotel room. Hyungwon ends up taking a walk around the area, changes into more comfortable clothes, and even brushes his teeth again, before ordering a iced Americano, thanking the mother and her little son for looking over his stuff before finishing his drink in merely a few minutes. 

Hyungwon gets bored enough by the second hour that he starts talking to the little kid next to him in broken Japanese. He realizes that despite his previous life living in Tokyo for the twenty-four years that he lived, this time around, he knows absolutely nothing. The kid doesn’t seem to mind it though, much more interested in the fact that he could speak to someone beside his mother.

When friendly conversation about Gundam figurines and what his favorite snack gets the boy tired enough for him to ask his mom if he could take a nap on her lap, Hyungwon pulls out his journal, realizing he's left all of his supplies back in Seoul. After rummaging through his bag, only to find a cheap ballpoint pen he had taken from the hotel, he starts writing, scribbling whatever comes to mind before running thick black lines over them in annoyance. Writing turns into drawing—drawing whatever comes to mind, whatever catches his line of vision. 

He doesn't realize how immersed he is in sketching that he startles when hearing the French lady next to him ask while peering over his shoulder, "Oh, do you draw?" 

He's outlined the girl sitting across from him on what he presumes is a Nintendo, bulky pink headphones on the top of fiery red curls. It's a rough drawing, and the pen hardly allows him to shade properly, but the lady seems impressed anyways.

The both of them ignore the fact that Hyungwon had nearly jumped out of his seat at her voice, and if the woman had heard his little huff of annoyance, she had decided to ignore it. "You write too?" She continues to ask, English thick and accented, pointing at the poem he's written on the side of the journal, with scribbles all over.

Wracking his brain for the proper reply, he only nods instead. The two of him end up engaging in a long conversation about the Renaissance era, and many other periods of art movements that exploded in Europe after that. She also suggests how he should visit The Louvre. He refrains from telling her how he was there when it was built. They end up bouncing from topic to topic, in a combination of English and one or two French phrases he still remembers from three lives ago when he was living in Quebec and going to Paris with Hoseok earlier in the year. She laughs at his attempts at a proper conversation, but applauds him for trying.

At one point, where the second hour turns into the fourth, she asks him in English, “Do you sometimes feel like you’ve lived a lot more than you think you have?”

Inwardly, he laughs at the seriousness of the question; it’s intimate, hardly something you’d asked a stranger at an airport, but something tells Hyungwon she knows more about what she’s asking than she’s letting on.

“I,” He starts before biting his lip and shrugging, “Sometimes I feel like I’m not living enough.”

The woman nods, her thin lips curling into a soft smile as her iridescent, cattish eyes twinkle. When he stares into them, he realizes that his heart aches at the familiarity of them.

She's also clearly not satisfied with his answer, but replies anyways, tone ominous, “ _Je vois_ , I see.”

 

— — — —

 

 **Location** : Seoul, South Korea  
**Time** : 23:45:48 PM

 

Hyungwon gets back home late into the night, keys hitting together, echoing down the hall of the apartment floor. He winces at the noise, unlocks the doors, and drags himself back inside. He thinks he hears Pinky, the old cat living in 495 croon a pathetic meow that eerily sounds like _‘hello’_ , but he’s also sure that running on three hours of sleep in the past three days could also be a contributing factor to his slight hallucinations. 

Sometimes, it’s hard for him to sleep. Kept awake by memories—too much of them—that belong to him but don’t feel like are his. Kept awake because of rumbling laughter, the ghost of small hands that fit perfectly in his, and an empty feeling in his chest. Sometimes his sleeping problems stem from jet-lag caused by constant traveling. Not that he doesn’t sleep either. Because he does. Hyungwon sleeps a lot: on planes, on his couch, and once, in front of Hoseok’s apartment door because he couldn’t be bothered to get off on his own stop on the train ride home from work. And when he's sleeping, he dreams of black hair, soft cheeks, and dark eyes he wants to drown himself in. 

He treks to the kitchen first as he takes off his shoes and slips on the slippers he knows are Minhyuk's, left from years ago, haphazardly onto the shoe rack. Taking a walk around the neighborhood had proved to be futile in soothing his nerves and quieting his roaring mind. He blames it on the suffocating nightlife of the city. Hyungwon has always been a country side boy.

The kitchen island is dimly lit by yellow light, and there’s an empty box of mac n’ cheese he’d made two nights ago after watching five consecutive videos on which celebrities made the best homemade dishes.

As he digs through his nearly empty refrigerator, frowning at the half eaten McDonald’s big mac burger he ordered on a whim the night before, he checks his phone, seeing the three missed calls from Minhyuk and a text message from Hoseok asking when he’d be back from his trip to Singapore. There is a voicemail from Kihyun, but he can’t bring himself to listen it.

 

**hyungwon  
** **sent at 12:03am**

i got back like, two weeks ago  
also why is minhyuk calling me?  
how does he even know my number?  
i haven’t seen him in two years

**hoseok  
** **sent at 12:04am**

AND??? YOU DIDN'T BOTHER??  
to tell ME??????

 

**sent at 12:07am**

i gave him your number  
also minhyuk just opened up a cafe  
well, its really a bakery  
but yeah uwu  
im proud of him like the last time i saw him  
he almost burnt my eyebrows off  
in senior year when we shared a apartment together  
lol lol  
also you didn’t answer my question mister!!

 

**hyungwon  
** **sent at 12:20am**

i assumed you knew my entire  
schedule like the back of your hand  
…

 

**sent at 12:30am**

congrats to minhyuk by the way  
tell him i said that

**hoseok  
** **sent at 12:32am**

>:(  
you can tell him that!!  
yourself!!!  
in PERSON !!!!!!

 

Hyungwon doesn’t bother to reply after. He knows he’s bad at communicating with others. He’s glad that he has people like Hoseok to look out for him, despite his initial reluctance when they had first met. He’s grateful, and even if Hyungwon doesn’t say it a lot, he knows Hoseok understands. 

The hand he has on the tin-foiled wrapped burger falters, and his lips deepen into a frown. Maybe he should tell Minhyuk that in person. He misses Hoseok, misses Minhyuk, misses his friends. Misses his friends in both this life and his past ones. He misses a lot. Misses people, pets, old selves, and places he’s once lived at. 

He hadn’t really gotten back from Seoul two weeks ago. He’d taken a detour to Guangzhou before heading back just three days ago. He misses his friends, and he’s missed the bustling city that constantly clogs his pores with fine dust. Yet it only seems like the one place Hyungwon doesn’t want to be is Seoul. 

A small part of him knows exactly why: Seoul has long stopped feeling like home, just like with Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Quebec, and the hundreds of other cities his past lives had lived in. 

Flopping onto the beige couch he vaguely remembers Minhyuk and Hoseok finding for him, he signs in discontent. The television is still on from when he had left the house an hour ago, and there’s a commercial for a dating site playing before his drooping eyes. The tagline goes something along the lines of, “soulmates: become one, again”

Snorting uncharacteristically, he changes the channel, sinking deeper into the couch.

Soulmates.

Destined to be together.

Yeah right.

The thing about soulmates is that it only exists to a few (unlucky) people. He’s heard teenagers loitering in front of a 7/11 call it an urban legend. Some myth your grandparents and parents told you so they could get great-grandchildren and grandchildren. That the love of your life—your soulmate—are people you are destined to be with, people who you have loved in past lives. 

It’s not exactly called soulmates either. Hyungwon just thinks, if he's going to die fifty hundred times and remember each single one of his past lives, and fall in love with the same person over and over, he might as well stick on the fancy term for the person he’s going to be stuck with forever.

Hyungwon has only met a handful of people who also remember their other lives like he does. It's almost like being apart of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's just no shame in telling people you've been clean. But people will think you've gone crazy if you said you were the concubine of some important guy during the feudal period.

Not to say he doesn't think the concept of soulmates isn't cute, because it is. It's flattering almost, seeing as how the world had exactly the right person for you, no matter what life. But it is also cursed, unfair, and selfish. Hyungwon has lived over 105 times, died roughly the same amount, and has cried a lot more than that combined. People like him are rare—people that can remember their other lives. Past lives existing in an infinite amount of worlds, in an infinite amount of periods. But they aren’t really past lives, more so alternate universes, he’s come to call them. In one, he’s a college student, part time model with an aloof personality. In another, he was the son of a mafia leader, charismatic, but too often wore his heart on his sleeve. In one world, he was an idol, with millions of adoring fans and people who he could call  _brothers._ Most times, though, he’s no one, and he much prefers that to anything else.

Hyungwon doesn’t exactly understand it (doesn’t really want to), but after waking up in another body that didn’t feel like his,  _but was his,_ and with memories he didn’t remember having, he starts to understand.

He's also starting to realize he overuses the word understand a lot. There is nothing Hyungwon understands about soulmates, but he would like to think he was an expert at this type of lifestyle (Hoseok would beg to differ). 

In this world, Hyungwon is a successful free-lance photographer (that’s how he met Kihyun), and an artist on the side (because clearly his degree in graphic design screams that it’s his passion). He had tried picking up a side job of modeling for Kihyun, given his stature and looks, but soon found himself bored with not being behind the camera. He makes enough that allows him to travel the world whenever he wants. His parents are both people with prestigious backgrounds and positions. They don’t exactly deserve the Best Parents Award, but they love him, support him despite not exactly understanding him, and that is what is important.

He is Chae Hyungwon is this life, twenty four years old and tired. In this life, he is quiet, a little too clumsy, and hopeless.

The more he thinks about the role he’s been playing in the universe, the more he starts to feel sick. 

Maybe he should visit Minhyuk’s new bakery. Or he could take a small trip to Jeju for a few days.

 

— — — —

 

Hyungwon doesn’t end up going to Jeju. Instead, he finds himself sitting in front of a skeptical looking Hoseok and an extremely ecstatic Minhyuk a week later. There’s an array of sweets and baked goods laid out in front of him that sort of makes his stomach hurt. There’s a long pause of silence, aside from the noise Hyungwon makes with his straw as he drinks whatever concoction Minhyuk had told the barista to make. It’s then, as they stare at him—one in eager, the other in judgement—that he realizes how much he’s missed them. Of course he doesn’t voice it out (he isn’t that kind of person), but the almost sheepish, lopsided smile he gives them says a lot.

Hoseok’s ‘i am highly disappointed in you mister’ facade drops pretty quickly as Hyungwon notices the way he starts twitching in his seat. His shoulders drops first before Hoseok's reaching across the small wooden table and clutching onto him tightly.

“Are you sniffling?” Hyungwon asks incredulously as he pats Hoseok’s wide shoulders in what he assumes would be soothing motions.

“Yes, you idiot. What about it?!” Hoseok spits back with a force that leaves both him and Minhyuk smiling at each other. Hyungwon continues to rub his back as Minhyuk rolls his eyes before excusing himself to go back to work.

Hyungwon can feel Hoseok hum against the crook of his neck before squeezing him one last time before pulling back.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” Hoseok says pointedly as he lets Hyungwon go, settling back into his seat.

The stare Hoseok gives him is questioning, almost as if Hoseok already knows what Hyungwon’s going to say, he just wants Hyungwon to say it himself. He sort of feels like he’s back in college, when he’d first told Hoseok about his secret. Hoseok’s always made himself out to be a bit slow, not dumb, but a little naive and oblivious to people around him. But the real Hoseok is observant, a bit attuned to the emotions of others around him, and too smart for his own good. Hyungwon’s never successfully gotten passed Hoseok, and honestly? Nothing has changed since.

And people like to say Kihyun’s observant. He’s got nothing on the man sitting in front of him.

So Hyungwon does what he does best when faced with a particularly more determined Hoseok, he deflects.

Rather horribly of course. As the only thing Hyungwon does is give Hoseok a shrug and a simple reply of, “I’ve been traveling.”

“You’ve running away, you mean.” Hoseok states back quickly, clearly seeing through him. “You only travel like that when your trying to run away from something. Or someone.”

“I’m not—“ Hyungwon stares at his nails and shakes his head, “It's not like that. I had work to do in those cities too.”

The moment Hoseok purses his lips into a thin line, dark brows furrowing together as a sharp look disappointment flashes through his eyes, Hyungwon realizes there's no point in trying to walk around the obvious elephant in the room, “In the past year, you’ve gone to five different countries, Hyungwon. I also know that you just didn’t go to Singapore earlier this month. You always update me on the places you go or at least you try to tell me when you’re back in Seoul.”

“Also, if you had work to do there, you would’ve bought the camera you use for work, and not the one Minhyuk and I gifted you as a graduation gift.”

Hyungwon suddenly feels irrationally defensive for some reason, “I was feeling a little sentimental.” 

“The lens on that camera got scratched, remember? You jokingly said now you didn't have to use photoshop to filter your photos. So there was no way you'd use that camera for any of your professional works." Hyungwon feels himself shrink at Hoseok's pointed stare as the older man continues, "Tell me the truth Hyungwon. The moment you graduated, you literally fell off the face of Earth. Which was fine! You've always liked to be alone, we all gave you the space. Then you came back after a year saying you found a job, and that was amazing. You love photography, you're magic with the camera. But then after our trip to Paris last year, you started back up your disappearing act and—“

“I found him.” Hyungwon cuts him off and Hoseok frowns.

“What?”

“Him, the one that I’m—that I’m,” _fated to be with._ Is what he can’t say, and Hoseok, _bless him_ , understands.

“Oh,” Hoseok replies softly. The hard look on his face mellows out, and he's looking at him in the same way looking at the sweets made him feel. It's not a look filled with a sense of sorry. Hoseok's long past that point with Hyungwon and his situation. It's more of a overwhelming sense of understanding. Hyungwon doesn't know if it makes him feel any better, but the queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach tells him otherwise. "And does he—"

“No." Hyungwon says, suddenly no longer wanting to be in front of Hoseok. "He doesn’t remember me at all. One hundred and five lives, six if you count this one. Every single one of them, I have known him. And every single time, he doesn’t even recognize me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually wrote this while i was waiting for my doctor's appointment, ay
> 
> comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, thank you for reading!


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